Jesus--Fact or Fiction??

[Gregory]

Take it to Rupert Murdoch.  He will give you a fair hearing.

[Newtonian]

Richard Carrier published a book a couple of years ago titled: On the Historicity of Jesus (Why we Might Have Reason for Doubt).  I read it when it was published and found it fascinating.  However, it is a long book (almost 700 pages) and very heavily footnoted--which I like.  Early on he established what is factually known about Christianity and Jesus broken down into units or elements of data.  There are 48 elements and each one is a statement of fact or knowledge that has been established and accepted as fact.  These may be disputed, but he indicates only by the most fanatical, but is generally accepted as established among most scholars.  So, I thought I'd list all these elements, one at a time and see if anyone has feedback about these elements. 

So, without much surprise, I'll start the listing with Element 1:

The earliest form of Christianity definitely known to us originated as a Jewish sect in the region of Syria-Palestine in the early first century CE.

Actually Jesus was a faithful Jew - he accepted the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures but rejected man-made traditions of groups like the Pharisees and Sadducees.  For example, from the Bible quoting Jesus:

Matthew 15:3-9 (new edition of NW) -

In reply he said to them: “Why do you overstep the commandment of God because of your tradition?+
4
For example, God said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’+ and, ‘Let the one who speaks abusively of* his father or mother be put to death.’*
5 But you say, ‘Whoever says to his father or mother: “Whatever I have that could benefit you is a gift dedicated to God,”+
6 he need not honor his father at all.’ So you have made the word of God invalid because of your tradition.+
7 You hypocrites, Isaiah aptly prophesied about you when he said:+
8 ‘This people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far removed from me.
9 It is in vain that they keep worshipping me, for they teach commands of men as doctrines.’”+

[Newtonian]

I read the bible as a child, like I read the family encyclopedia and the dictionaries.  I caught on to the "Jesus as Santa Clause for adults" pretty quick.  But I was never sure.  I can only guess my age, but I think it was about 12, and decided that religious claims made no sense.  My parents never admitted their uncertainty and I had to get through the religious nonsense on my own. 

In retrospect, I understand that my parents were being carefully neutral.  And had they chosen a "side" I might be a very different person.  But my questioning of religion as "illogical" helped me through all my years after.  I made up my own mind.

Yes, most religions are illogical.  Like for example so-called Christians who go to war and yet are aware of Jesus' sermon on the mount (Matthew chapters 5 - 7) that we (true Christians) should love our enemies (Matthew 5:44) and are to learn war no more (Isaiah 2:2-4 -partially quoted on the 'Isaiah wall' of the U.N.).

[Newtonian]

I sort of had it in mind to list these one a day.  But some are so short that I will move on more quickly than that.

Element 2:
When Christianity began. Judaism was highly sectarian and diverse.  There was no 'normative' set of Jewish beliefs, but a countless array of different Jewish belief systems vying for popularity.  We know of at least ten competing sects,  possibly more than 30 and there could have easily been more.  .......................... No argument, therefore, can proceed from an assumption of any universally normative Judaism.

True Christianity started with Jesus Christ.   He followed what the Bible (only the Hebrew Scriptures were written before Jesus died) actually teaches and rejected the various traditions in various apostate Jewish groups like the Essenes (etc.).

Ironically, Gandhi (a Hindu) understood Jesus direction to love our enemies better than most so-called Christian religions,

[Baruch]

Newtonian ... your apologetics are conventional.  I am affirmative of religion (uniquely here) because I see religion as a part of general culture, and I am humanist.  The epistemological objection (rationalization) to theism is a water tight argument.  People here helped me sharpen my theism, but didn't dissuade me from it.  Very frustrating for them.  But conventional apologetics won't make any headway.

What are your personal spiritual/religious experiences?  That is empirical.  The empirical trumps the pseudo-rational.  Theology is a weak defense of religion, as St Thomas Aquinas realized at the end of his life (when he finally had a genuine religious experience).  Of course St Francis of Assisi could of told him ... "hold my beer".

BTW time and experience have made me a mystic.  I would rather see the burning bush myself, than hear a story of a story of Moses seeing the burning bush.

Scriptural argument is common, and weak.  A book proves nothing.  Spiritual and religious experience may be dismissed, may be subjective ... but they are at least genuine.  I love books, including the Bible in the original languages, but that isn't what convinces me.  That is a hobby.

On this specific OP ... the historicity of Jesus is both an apologetic of Abrahamic religions (historical justification) and it is irrelevant to me.  Inspiring stories, but not hard justifications.  One has to recognize the indwelling of deity first, then the out-dwelling of deity is obvious.  But anti-humanism cuts that off at the root.  Unfortunately there is a lot of anti-humanism in the ancient religious/political literature we call the Bible.  So no inerrency or infallibility for me.  And W Asian religious literature is too narrow, neglects the many other advanced cultures.

[Newtonian]

Newtonian ... your apologetics are conventional.  I am affirmative of religion (uniquely here) because I see religion as a part of general culture, and I am humanist.  The epistemological objection (rationalization) to theism is a water tight argument.  People here helped me sharpen my theism, but didn't dissuade me from it.  Very frustrating for them.  But conventional apologetics won't make any headway.

What are your personal spiritual/religious experiences?  That is empirical.  The empirical trumps the pseudo-rational.  Theology is a weak defense of religion, as St Thomas Aquinas realized at the end of his life (when he finally had a genuine religious experience).  Of course St Francis of Assisi could of told him ... "hold my beer".

BTW time and experience have made me a mystic.  I would rather see the burning bush myself, than hear a story of a story of Moses seeing the burning bush.

Scriptural argument is common, and weak.  A book proves nothing.  Spiritual and religious experience may be dismissed, may be subjective ... but they are at least genuine.  I love books, including the Bible in the original languages, but that isn't what convinces me.  That is a hobby.

On this specific OP ... the historicity of Jesus is both an apologetic of Abrahamic religions (historical justification) and it is irrelevant to me.  Inspiring stories, but not hard justifications.  One has to recognize the indwelling of deity first, then the out-dwelling of deity is obvious.  But anti-humanism cuts that off at the root.  Unfortunately there is a lot of anti-humanism in the ancient religious/political literature we call the Bible.  So no inerrency or infallibility for me.  And W Asian religious literature is too narrow, neglects the many other advanced cultures.

We believe the Bible is God's Word.   No human author could have known earth is hung in empty space upon nothing as Job 26:7 indicates, Job 26:10 that the terminator on earth is a circle, Isaiah 40:22 that earth is round and the heavens are expanding'

But more important - God is love (1 John 4:8) and the 2 greatest commandments in the Bible according to Jesus involve love (Matthew 22:37-40).   As does the new commandment in John 13:34.   Not to mention love for our enemies in Matthew 5:44.
What is life without love?

Jehovah's Witnesses do not accept Christendom's conventional beliefs.  (Of course, almost all human groups get some things correct)

We consider truth to be sacred, as in Jesus' prayer to Jehovah in John 17:17.

[Baruch]

Go beyond that.  Don't just parrot a sect founder.  Seek to have your own genuine experiences.  Let them guide you.  You might not be ready for that yet.  You will either become a better JW, or travel beyond JW.  Either way you and the Holy Spirit win.

[Mike Cl]

Actually Jesus was a faithful Jew - he accepted the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures but rejected man-made traditions of groups like the Pharisees and Sadducees.  For example, from the Bible quoting Jesus:

Matthew 15:3-9 (new edition of NW) -

In reply he said to them: “Why do you overstep the commandment of God because of your tradition?+
4
For example, God said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’+ and, ‘Let the one who speaks abusively of* his father or mother be put to death.’*
5 But you say, ‘Whoever says to his father or mother: “Whatever I have that could benefit you is a gift dedicated to God,”+
6 he need not honor his father at all.’ So you have made the word of God invalid because of your tradition.+
7 You hypocrites, Isaiah aptly prophesied about you when he said:+
8 ‘This people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far removed from me.
9 It is in vain that they keep worshipping me, for they teach commands of men as doctrines.’”+

If you had read the entire thread dealing with the historicity of jesus, you'd see there is no proof (no proof, in case you can't figure that out, means none, zip, zero, not a shred of evidence that he existed) of his existence outside the bible.  And the bible, of course, is also a work of fiction.  There were over 100 writers of history working during his supposed time of life and not one mentioned him.  Not one!  You believe in a fiction--it would be like me insisting that Bugs Bunny was an actual creature and spouting his quotes as proof of his existence.  You, my friend, have been and are being mislead and lied to.   

[Baruch]

The literary Jesus is the only Jesus we know from the Bible.  His orthodoxy or heterodoxy, orthopraxis or heteropraxis are debatable, because there is disagreement on what Judaism is.  Josephus reports there were 24 kinds of Judaism n the 1st century CE.  But I would support, that the idea that Jesus was anti-Jewish, or Gentile, are false narratives.

[trdsf]

We believe the Bible is God's Word.   No human author could have known earth is hung in empty space upon nothing as Job 26:7 indicates, Job 26:10 that the terminator on earth is a circle, Isaiah 40:22 that earth is round and the heavens are expanding'

That's cherry picking.  You then have to explain why the bible also claims that the Earth and plants were created before the sun, that pi is exactly 3, that the Earth has four corners and is covered by a hard ceiling called the firmament, and that if you go up a high enough tree (OT) or mountain (NT) you can see the entire Earth at once.

Alternately, why do you not revere H.G. Wells as a prophet for accurately predicting (deep breath) audiobooks, airplanes, television, email, nuclear proliferation, lasers and directed energy weapons, and genetic engineering.  In 1865, Jules Verne predicted lunar landings with surprising accuracy -- his lander was called the Columbiad (the actual first Lunar Command Module was the Columbia), weighed 20,000 pounds (the actual lander weighed 26,000) and cost $5.5 million in 1865 money -- worth $13 billion in 1969, and the cost of the Apollo XI mission was $16 billion.  Arthur C. Clarke reeled off a surprisingly accurate description of the Internet... in 1964.  Hell, in a story I myself wrote in 2002, I predicted the Higgs boson would be confirmed in 2012 -- and it was.

The reason is multifold.

First, there is the 'stopped clock' phenomenon, wherein if you make enough statements, some small number of them will happen to be correct simply by chance.

Second, there is 'confirmation bias': you can (and did) pick and choose events and knowledge that just happen to fit certain select passages -- and can choose to ignore factually inaccurate passages.

Third, you attribute this to the one thing that you wish to be true -- and as I've demonstrated, it's not the only source for predictions (aka "guesses") that happen to come true.

The practical upshot is that you cannot pick one source, trumpet its alleged accuracies, and ignore both its demonstrated inaccuracies, and other sources that had equal or even better predictive power.

[Baruch]

It is as easy to shoot fish in a barrel, as to fish there in the first place.

[Newtonian]

If you had read the entire thread dealing with the historicity of jesus, you'd see there is no proof (no proof, in case you can't figure that out, means none, zip, zero, not a shred of evidence that he existed) of his existence outside the bible.  And the bible, of course, is also a work of fiction.  There were over 100 writers of history working during his supposed time of life and not one mentioned him.  Not one!  You believe in a fiction--it would be like me insisting that Bugs Bunny was an actual creature and spouting his quotes as proof of his existence.  You, my friend, have been and are being mislead and lied to.

Why did you reject the historical evidence I posted about?   Please be specific.   For example Tacitus and Josephus.

[Newtonian]

The literary Jesus is the only Jesus we know from the Bible.  His orthodoxy or heterodoxy, orthopraxis or heteropraxis are debatable, because there is disagreement on what Judaism is.  Josephus reports there were 24 kinds of Judaism n the 1st century CE.  But I would support, that the idea that Jesus was anti-Jewish, or Gentile, are false narratives.

Pretty simple really - Jesus accepted and followed what was/is written in the canon (39 books from Genesis to Malachi in KJV) of the Hebrew Scriptures but rejected man-made traditions and doctrines (as I quoted Jesus above) of many divisions of the Jewish religion which were practiced and taught as Jesus' time.

The Hebrew Scriptures teach the Jewish religion - the groups that violated Bible teachings with man-made traditions and doctrines were apostate Jews.   See Matthew 15:3-9 quoted above.

One of the apostate teachings that is still present in modern day Judaism is the failure to pronounce the Divine Name (H3068/Jehovah in English) and it has spread to Christendom in their Bible translations that remove God's name (found nearly 7,000 times in the original Hebrew Scriptures) and replaced it with Lord/LORD which is H113/adon & H136/adonay in Hebrew.

If you want to see the nearly 7,000 times KJV reads Lord from the above 3 Hebrew words, see Strong's Exhaustive Concordance as well as Strong's Hebrew dictionary which defines each word by Strong's numbers.

[Mike Cl]

Why did you reject the historical evidence I posted about?   Please be specific.   For example Tacitus and Josephus.

I didn't see that post--I'll have to look it up.  and then I'll reject it. :)

[Mike Cl]

Newton, I still did not find your post regarding the 'facts' of Jesus.  But pushing forward, here is a snippet about Tacitus and his Annuals.

He gives a brief mention of a "Chrstus" in his Annals (Book XV, Sec. 44), which he wrote around 109 CE. He gives no source for his material. He says:

“”Nero looked around for a scapegoat, and inflicted the most fiendish tortures on a group of persons already hated for their crimes. This was the sect known as Chrestians. Their founder, one Chrstus had been put to death by the procurator, Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. This checked the abominable superstition for a while, but it broke out again and spread, not merely through Judea, where it originated, but even to Rome itself, the great reservoir and collecting ground for every kind of depravity and filth. Those who confessed to being Christians were at once arrested, but on their testimony a great crowd of people were convicted, not so much on the charge of arson, but of hatred of the entire human race.
Even assuming the passage is totally genuine, two fires had destroyed much in the way of official documents Tacitus had to work with and it is unlikely that he would sift through what he did have to find the record of an obscure crucifixion which suggests that Tacitus was repeating an urban myth whose source was likely the Christians themselves,[2]:344 especially since Tacitus was writing at a time when at least the three synoptic gospels are thought to already have been in circulation.

Nowhere does the name "Jesus" appear.  Jesus' name was not Jesus Christ--Christ is not a name of a person but a designation to indicate a person was anointed into a particular office or position.  Tacitus wrote this long after your Jesus had died, anyway, and was probably simply repeating myth--at least part of what we now call the bible was in circulation then.  Tacitus was simply reporting rumors.